Oisin and Friend

Designed by Danny Osborne, made of porcelain clay, cotton net lace dipped in porcelain clay is applied by hand to Orla’s coat. This figurine is entirely hand painted and is fired 3 times (temperature between 800 and 1290).

When Irelands foremost explorers Danny and Geraldine Osborne went to the Arctic for a year (1989) they took their three young children Oisin, Orla and Tempy with them.

They lived with the Inuit hunters in one of the most isolated communities in the world, nearly a thousand miles north of the Arctic Circle. The family travelled many hundreds of miles over the frozen sea ice on their dog-sledge, and the children thrived on a basic diet of raw seal meat.

During the long winter dark season, Danny made these models – “Orla Floe Hopping” and “Oisin and Friend” – of the children especially for Irish Dresden, as a permanent record of their amazing journeys.

Dressed in traditional caribou skin clothes and sealskin boots, they kept warm living outside for months on end in the snow. Not surprisingly, if was not long before people were calling them: The Snow Babies